FUNDACIO HOSPITAL UNIVERSITARI VALL D’HEBRON – INSTITUT DE RECERCA

Institute Presentation

Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) is a public sector institution that promotes and develops innovative biomedical research, with more than 740 publications in 2015 (Total Impact Factor: 4059), at the University Hospital Vall d’Hebron. The Department of Psychiatry and the Psychiatric Genetics Unit are part of Neuroscience Area, a section that is leading the translational research at our institution and is becoming one of the most important clusters of research on neurological and psychiatric disorders across Europe. The Department of Psychiatry, which is integrated by psychiatrists, geneticists, and statisticians, is a Spanish reference center for ADHD. The group has extensively expertise in clinical evaluation and patient recruitment, has excellent laboratory facilities for genetic studies as well as access to common services at the institution including the Support Unit for Biomedical Research Methodology (USMIB), the Scientific Unit technical Support (UCTS), which houses genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and bioinformatics facilities, and the Statistics and Bioinformatics Unit (BSU) that give us support for high-throughput data analysis in the context of different research projects. This multidisciplinary working and learning environment, as well as the diversity of scientific expertise that includes psychiatry, human genetics, statistical genetics and computational biology, gives support to multiple research projects. The VHIR will co-coordinate epigenetic modification profiles for impulsivity and compulsivity and participate in different tasks in nutritional interventions, effects of physical activity and exercise in interaction with diet, and intestinal microbiota as a mechanistic link between nutrition/lifestyle and impulsivity and compulsivity.